Good morning. My name is Daniela Klaus. I'm the General Secretary of Press Club Concordia. Welcome here in Vienna at Concordia and welcome to our audience online. I think there are quite a lot of people online. Welcome to today's event with Russian independent journalists in exile and in Russia. This is an event in our series of seminars and talks, to put it very simple, to understand what's going on. As all of you know, the terrible war is also an information war. And independent journalism in Russia has been silenced and under threat for over a decade or even more. But many journalists in exile and within the country still produce very impressive work. We want to know how you work. We want to know how to combat propaganda and how to reach the audiences. And if it's even possible to do journalism. that propaganda and how to reach the audiences. And how it's even, and if it's even possible to do journalism. A very warm welcome to our speakers. And thank you very much. Thank you also and welcome to our partners at this event, Fium Forum for Journalism and Media Vienna, hello Simon, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung here in Vienna. And a very special thanks to Mirjana Tomic, who is the mastermind and organizer of this series. And she will also be our moderator today here at Concordia. I will moderate the online chat. Hello. And I will try to take as many questions as possible. That's it from my side, as short as possible as always. And thank you very much. And the floor is yours, Mirjana. Good morning, everybody, and Presseclub Concordia and online. And I never make it short, so I apologize in advance. My name is Mirjana Tomic. I'm a former journalist, and I currently curate and moderate talks and seminars in politics and media in Europe, customized for journalists and academic researchers. In the name of my two employers, FUME and Presse Club Concordia, I would like to thank Friedrich Eberschtiftung for being part of this conversation with Russian independent journalists. Before I say anything about the importance of the topic, I would like to introduce all the journalists who came here, and one came from Russia. So I will start, and I'm not doing it chronologically in terms of when one was born, but more like of appearance, with Galina Timchenko, the co-founder, just get up for a second, the co-founder of Meduza. Then Tikhan Dzhatko, editor-in-chief of TV Rain, here. Then Ilya Krasivschik, the founder of Helpdesk, and Jatko, editor-in-chief of TV Rain here. Then Ilya Krasivschik, the founder of Helpdesk Media. Then Irina Tumakova that came from St. Petersburg. She's not in exile. Then she works for Novaya Gazeta, Novaya Gazeta Europe. Then Kirill Artyomenko, director of Bumaga. It's a local media in exile from St. Petersburg. Loya Nordic, she is an activist, feminist, anti-war activist, and her organization, Feminist Anti-War Resistance, has their own communication strategy. Last but not least, I have to introduce Anna Litvinenko, who is a researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. She's joining us for the third time, and she's also my advisor on Russian media, so it's not only a speaker. In war situations, information and media play an essential role to inform and spread propaganda. The current Russia-Ukrainian war is no exception. There is just one difference. They have the tools that did not exist before. So everything is faster. There are more channels to spread both information and propaganda and lies, and they can do it in real time. So it makes things a bit more dangerous. Countering propaganda is not easy, especially in war situations. So we often think if people only knew what is happening, they would change their opinion. From my experience as a work journalist in the Balkans I could not even change the opinion of my father so believe me it is not easy at all. So at this moment as as we know there are over thousand Russian according to some accounts thousand Russian journalists who love the country. And Western countries place huge expectations that if you pump the money, these journalists who live abroad can change the situation in Russia. Our guests will say, is it possible? Can we expect miracles? Or there are just too many expectations from them? Our speakers today come from both established opposition media, like Meduza, that has been, this is no longer a foreign agent. It is now an enemy, unwanted organization. So it is one step before terrorist organization. Then we have TV Rain or TV Dozhd that had to leave Russia, like many journalists, overnight. And now they're leaving Latvia as well, for whatever reason. So is Meduza. The new home for many Russian journalists is Berlin, and are Berlin and Amsterdam. We have new initiatives like Help Desk and this feminist anti-war resistance. We have regional media like Bumaga, and we have this combination of Novaya Gazeta that is both in Russia and abroad. And just a few words and I'm finished. Our program today consists of two parts. There is the introductory part. Our partner, Christos Katsoulis, director of Friedrich Ebers Stiftung, will do a short presentation on European attitudes towards the war and how it has changed in one year. And then Anna Litvinenko will do a brief overview of who is who in the Russian media landscape, because there are people who stayed in Russia and, from what I understand, are still doing some sort of independent journalism. Then we shall have two panels. With panels, of course, I will moderate the first panel, Anna will moderate the second panel, and with panels there will be plenty of Q&A time. At the beginning we shall not have it because the colleagues from Friedrich-Ever-Stiftung are in Vienna, so whoever wants to talk about their study, they are welcome to do that. So, Christos, please, the floor is yours. What do Europeans think about the war? Please. Thank you very much, Mirjana. And I was quite anxious before starting to present our study here today because you said I have five minutes, the same amount of time you have. So I'll take your five minutes, which is ten minutes, which is making me quite easier now. Thank you very much for inviting us. When we said that we wanted to cooperate on this seminar, for us it was very important to do this together with Presseklub Concordia and FIUM, because we believe that the peace architecture in Europe is very much influenced also by perceptions. And therefore, we thought before starting this debate, we'll give you a very short, a very brief insight, a spotlight, as to say, in our big study, which we published at the Munich Security Conference, the Security Radar. Because it shows you on what kind of Russia we're talking about in Europe. It shows you how perceptions have changed and how Europeans right now perceive Russia and how we see a convergence of views here. The study is based on a representative poll in four countries. It's done in Poland, Germany, France, and Latvia. I will bombard you with a few numbers, but important are the trends. If you want to look at the numbers more thoroughly, go to our website. It's peace.fes.de, and you'll find it there. So what we see is a conversion of threat perceptions. We have done a poll in 2021 and one in 2022. And what we see is that in France and Germany, the view on Russia was quite benign, as to say, like that in 2021. And that has changed. We now have a view that Russia is a threat for all these countries in Germany, in France, as well as in Poland and Latvia. And the same thing applies when you ask people, do you think a military confrontation between Russia and the West is possible? That was unthinkable in Germany and France, especially before the war. After the war, this has changed. There is now fear and concern in these countries as well. If we ask people how they view this war, is it a proxy war? Is it a war between democracies and autocracies? Or is it a war about the territory of Ukraine? It's the violent part, the bigger part. So most people in all of the four countries believe that this war is about the Ukrainian territory. It's not an ideological war between democracy and autocracies, and it's not a proxy war. And the second thing that we see developing slowly inside the populations is this belief or the assessment that we're moving towards a kind of a new Cold War setting. If you look at the question, is the interest of countries or regions contradictory, you see that the European Union and Russia, America and Russia have contradictory interests, whereas you see a very, very low number between the United States and Europe, for example. So it's kind of a block forming here on the one side, Russia and China, and on the other hand, America and Europe. In the hands of people in Europe, of course. We do see, and I understand that especially you in the back can't read anything here, but there is a convergence in response. There is a general agreement that people want to widen sanctions, and that has been the case now in all four countries. There is a general agreement that people want to widen sanctions, and that has been the case now in all four countries. There is a general sense that people want to decouple from Russia. That is the yellow blocks in the middle. On China, the question is a little bit more difficult, so that is a harder nut to chew on in the future. And there is also a belief that we should raise our military expenses, which is the block on the right here. But this convergence doesn't lead to convergence also in responses. Because if you ask people, do you believe that the eastern enlargement of NATO or the European Union is a problem, there you see the difference again. In Germany and France, this eastern enlargement is perceived as a threat, whereas in Poland and Latvia it's different. So the question, and that is the next question, do you want that Ukraine joins NATO? Do you want that Ukraine joins the European Union? It's answered differently in the two parts of Europe, and we take them as part pro toto for what is two parts of Europe. And we take them as part of what is going on in Europe. So the question that will come up in the future on how to deal with this region and how to deal with this region between Europe and Russia will be a hard one to answer. Another difference that we can see is in the aims that should be pursued in this war. We took here a question from the European Council of Foreign Relations asking, do you want to pursue peace, even if that means compromises for Ukraine, meaning territory concessed to Russia? Or do you want justice, even if that means more Ukrainians killed and displaced? The left one, the violet part, is the peace camp, and the right one, the yellow one, is the so-called justice camp. But what you can see, and I think that is also kind of a positive outlook, is that especially in Poland and Latvia, people don't want to decide between these quite harsh and simplistic choices. So there is a differentiation in viewing this kind of war, but we see that there are different objectives, and that needs a debate inside Europe. Last point here, leading us a little bit into the debate, what does it mean on a broader, on a global level? What do people believe this war is doing in kind of global balances? Does it strengthen parts of the world or not? And you see clearly that people believe that NATO is strengthened, that's the blue part, that the US is strengthened, that's also the upper blue part, and that Russia, which is in the middle and the red part, is weakened very clearly. The European Union is viewed kind of static, neither strengthened nor weakened, and China is also seen as kind of strengthened by this war. So we're moving in the minds of people to a world that is kind of divided into blocks. We have a strengthened United States. We have strengthened China. We have a strengthened transatlantic bond with NATO. But we have a clearly weakened Russia, a Russia that is perceived as a threat. And we don't see many responses in our poll, which is far bigger. We have a 60-page study, and I've kind of compromised that into five minutes now. We have very, very few answers that show that people believe that we can cooperate or that even Russia can change in the future. If you want to see a little bit closer into it, I won't go into the challenges. Just visit our website. And thank you very much for your attention. Anna will, as I said, Anna Litvinenko is a researcher at Freie Universität Berlin and she will give us the overview of media landscape. Thank you, Mirjana. I was also given five to six minutes. I'll try to stick to the time. At the University of Berlin, we made some workshops and conferences for media in exile and also did some research. And here, it's very approximate. To give you an overview, it's not a full overview. Just to give you an idea about the media landscape in exile, you have, as Mirjana just said, some established media, some very new ones. The dark blue ones are like all Russian, so they have like audience in all Russia. And then you have also regional ones. They're not also complete list here, but some of them, the major ones, so you have on the one hand really established media. Many of you have heard of like Echo of Moscow, Novaya one hand, really established media many of you have heard of, like Echo of Moscow, Novaya Gazeta, TV Rain. And some of them had also their pandas offline when back in Russia, like Radio Echo of Moscow or newspaper Novaya Gazeta. And now they all are online only, although Novaya Gazeta do have some print editions. But actually, these are online-only media landscape. And also you have some media that appeared just last year. After the war, you see that, even some regional-oriented media. And the second axis that I draw, and it's also very approximate, which is just to give you an idea that there is like this trend towards more activism because journalism is kind of outlawed in Russia. It's illegal even to name war, war. And of course, in this situation, like everyone who does journalism is kind of, you know, turns into this activistic mode. But there are some new form formats like Help Desk, and Ilya will tell us about it more, which is in the intersection actually already, like really consciously between journalism and activism, where they do have really great journalistic formats, but they also have service part where they help Ukrainians and Russians. And then you have for media of feminist anti-war resistance, which is actually per se a movement, an anti-war movement, but they do have a newspaper, they do have telegram channels with media. So that's kind of a brief overview. And I would just name a few major challenges to start our discussion today, maybe. So what are the major challenges media have to overcome in exile? You have a really hard access to audiences in Russia, and that's not only because of banning of media, banning also of access to social media which is the only way to access now like one of the few ways to access audience. Meta as you know Facebook and Instagram are now extremist organizations in Russia you have to use VPN so it's kind of additional barrier for people but also self-censorship and maybe unwillingness of the audience to reach out to this media. Then, of course, you have a problem with information verification as the majority of journalists are in exile. Of course, there are some people who may be willing to help as freelancers, but how do you work with them? How do you verify information? How do you verify their professionalism? And also how you secure their safety and how they pay them. That's really all the questions you have to solve. And there are no sustainable business models. Everything that was built over the years, even, for instance, crowdfunding. Some media did manage to have crowdfunding back in Russia, but right now, due to sanctions, to payment, to self-censorship of users, it's also broken, and the majority of them rely on foreign grants, right? So that's really searching for new income sources. It's a big challenge. And, of course, security. It's not only just physical security for many journalists, our foreign agents, or as we heard, Medusa is an undesirable organization, which is a really big challenge. And also financial security, also mental health security, because you have to just, you did not really change your life overnight, maybe, you know, relocate. You have to deal on the daily basis with these hard topics, with war. And also you don't have any security, just the majority of journalists can just plan for several months, not more. That was it. I hope I didn't... Yeah, the gap. That was it. I hope I didn't... Yeah, the gap. Yeah, okay. Mariana also. Because we discussed with her also this gap, which is, I guess, growing between people who stayed in the country and who left. Even though they have similar values, they are anti-war, but actually, and maybe we can talk about it in also the second panel, kind of this idea of how you can, you know, like how you can talk about us in Russia, you know, like being abroad, you know, how to not to become this migrant media. I think it's a big, big fear, and how you not get detached from the audience, but also not detached from your colleagues there. Because like this gap and this, although, and it's very sad because it's, the Russian opposition is not united, has never been, but you know, this gap between people who stayed and people who left is also growing. So yeah, that was a short overview. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Anna. And now I would like to invite Galina, Tikhon, and Ilya to start our first panel. Vielen Dank. Thank you. Yeah is for me. Yeah, yeah, well. Thank you. Uh-huh. Well. Sorry. Well, the speakers at this panel are, let's say, the reference of independent journalism in Russia, and Ilya is also a reference of starting something totally new, and he will talk about it. So my first two questions will go to Galina, who is the co-founder of Meduza. I think a lot of us read Meduza regularly and I should say that Galina left Russia in 2014 because at the time she called the Russian entrance or invasion of Donbas, an invasion. She had to leave the country, and she founded Meduza that has become a reference for many of us as the independent source of news. But actually, her main audience was a Russian audience. In the meantime, things have changed quite a bit. And so now, Meduza is no longer like other media, has to depend on foreign grants. Meduza is leaving Latvia, where it has been since 2014, more or less, transferring, you will explain, to Berlin and Amsterdam. TV Rain, it's a bit of a different story. It was the only independent TV channel in Russia, launched in 2010. Tikhan is editor-in-chief. They had to leave, I understand, overnight, and everyone saw how you were playing Swan Lake when you were leaving the office. I understand Swan Lake was the music that was played on Russian TV when dignitaries died. No, it was played during the coup. Oh, I see. You relocated to Riga, and now you're moving to Amsterdam. You relocated to Riga and now you're moving to Amsterdam. You said, not you personally, one of your anchors said, our army, in reference to the Russian army, and it was the cause for you to lose the license. Before we speak about Help Desk, which is a bit of a different story, as I was preparing for today, I saw a lot of talks with both of you for different media, and I thought everyone has so much expectations that you can do miracles with the Russian audience. Are miracles possible? Are there too many expectations? Galina. It depends what you call miracle. It seems to me that in such toxic environment, our existence and our reaching audience is miracle as well. For sure, because one year ago we were labeled as a foreign agent and we lost our revenue, 90% of our revenue, and we started a crowdfunding campaign and we were more or less successful. And I could say that maybe it was the most successful crowdfunding campaign in Russian media history because 177,000 people supported us financially. And then the war started, and Western sanctions were imposed, and then the war started and we, Western sanctions were imposed and we lost our crowdfunding campaign totally. At the fourth of March we stopped receiving payments from Russia and it was financial breakdown for the second time in one year. So and then a week after the war started, we were blocked inside Russia. So it seems to me that from Kremlin perspective, we should die more than twice. But we survived, and it's a miracle. And still we have millions of our audience because in autumn of 2021, we realized that our blocking is just a matter of time and we started preparing for this. We started a huge promo campaign for our platforms and we upgraded our mobile application. And now it has five built-in mechanism of bypassing, blocking and works perfectly well inside Russia. So when Meduza was blocked, we lost more than 40% of our website audience, but we doubled our audience in our other platforms and tripled audience of our mobile application. So reaching audience, millions of Russians, reaching audience is a miracle in such circumstances. But I think that the donors are thinking more of changing the opinion of those Russians who are subject to or who believe in the propaganda. Yeah, sure. And every time when I speak at the conferences or meet with foreign donors or NGOs, they say, how could you reach audience who are under propaganda? And I have to say openly and clearly that it's not my task. I have more than 15 million people inside Russia who desperately need the truth and the information, and I do not have enough sources to convert tens of millions of Russians to my site. So I want to serve to my audience to those 15, 12, 20 millions of people who really need truthful information. And it's just a wishful thinking. Let's convert them to our side. It seems to me that it's almost impossible. And I used to compare it with the totalitarian cult. You know, it could take maybe five years to make clear that totalitarian cult and to make people free from this. So it's not that easy. But we could do it with our devoted readers. For example, it's a funny fun fact, but half a year ago, we started making PDF versions of our articles. And we push our readers to be our ambassadors. Please use printer. We developed special design. You know PDF is ugly. But we developed special design for this PDF version. Please use printer and give this article to your seniors, to your family, to your grandma, to your mom, and so on. So we are trying to use our, or you can share it in WhatsApp, the most popular messenger in Russia. You could share this PDF version through WhatsApp with your family, with your friends, with your home group, and so on. So we are trying to use our readers as our ambassadors, but it's not my main task. Thank you. Dikon. Well, first of all, thanks for having me and having us here. I think that the… I'm not so polite, sorry. I think the problem of high expectations, especially at the beginning of the war, is a very big problem because it seems to me that in early days or early months of the war, a lot of people in the European Union and a lot of people in the US, they thought that Russian independent media should report a couple of months about the atrocities in the war and about war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine and Russian society or Russian population would wake up and through Putin etc. etc. It's not possible if you look at the context. Unfortunately for more than 20 plus years Russian society was almost alone with the Russian government, and Russian government was brainwashing Russian people with its terrible propaganda. And it's impossible to change minds of people in months if their minds have been broken over the years, over more than two decades. And I think we have two steps now. The first step is what Galina was telling us, is how not to lose this audience, which is not infiltrated by the propaganda. Because for example, TV Rain has been off the air since March till July, and we know a lot of stories how our viewers, our core audience who has been watching TV radio over the years, just in a couple of weeks after not watching TV radio, they started to watch propaganda. And they changed their minds in a week because it's much more easier to change your mind from independent information to propaganda rather than from propaganda to independent media because the picture of reality drawn by propaganda is much more plausible. It's better. Your life is much better when you watch Russian state TV. So the first thing is how not to lose your core audience. And we think that it's very good news that we have, we, I mean TV Rain, we have up to 14 million viewers in Russia monthly. The second thing is that let's not think about core audience of Russian propaganda. You cannot do anything without them. You have no power to fight with the propaganda in this case because propaganda goes from each and every teapot or I don't know. Let's talk about the people who are in between. And this is the biggest part of the society in Russia, people who are between these two flanks, independent media, Russian propaganda. These people in between, they are in denial, they are nothing is absolutely obvious, or these people, they just want to live their own life not knowing about the war and not knowing about what is actually happening. And to us, to TVRen, and I think for almost all independent media in exile in Russia, this audience is the second priority, how to talk to them and how not to let them to go to this flank of Russian propaganda and how to take them with you. Before I come to you, just a second, just a follow-up question. What does your audience, the one that you want to keep, want to hear? Are they sick of listening about the war? What are your main topics? Do they want to move on? What is your main content? Is it the war? Is it not the war? And who is your audience? I understand that about one million Russians left the country. Is your audience inside the country, outside of country? And I also hear there is a growing gap. So. These are very important questions. We just spent two days talking about it with our colleagues. First thing, the fact that a lot of Russians left the country, this fact didn't change anything for our audience. If we see at the percentage, we see that 63, 65 people of our viewers are still in Russia, like it was before the war. Then goes Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, United States, et cetera, et cetera. This is the first thing. The second thing, very important. Unfortunately, and it's obvious, this is not subject to blame someone. People in Russia are tired of the war. Nothing is changing in their daily life. Nothing is changing critically when they hear about new battle in Bahmut or in Salidar. And if you feed them with this information, they will tell, okay, this is the story I heard yesterday and I heard it two days ago. I think the most important thing is to tell audience that this war is about them. What do I mean? The prices for cars are becoming higher. They do not think about the war. They think about the fact that it's not easier to buy a car. Today, it's less easier to buy a car than yesterday. Why? Let's talk about why. Or they want to go with a kid to a movie about something. All the movies they could watch are Russian produced because international movies are not allowed to be broadcasted in Russian cinemas, Russian theaters. Why? Maybe because of the war. So I think the most important thing now is to talk about the war, not talking about the war directly. Because if you only give them information from the front lines, information from the ground, they do not feel connection with it, because bombs are not falling on their heads. You should explain to them that the war is about them, as well as about the Ukrainians. Thank you. Now I come to Ilya. I would like you to explain your project. That's one thing. I would also like you to reflect on something that we talked over on the phone, that you are becoming more of an activist and less of a journalist in this situation. Ilya, he's young but has a long career behind him. He worked for Meduza as well, so he was a journalist. Then he was an entrepreneur within Yandex, and now you have come back to journalism, activism. He has just moved from Tbilisi to Berlin. And please explain your project, because it is about the war. And he is on the list because of a criminal prosecution, because he was one of the first to reveal in Russia, from what I understand, about the Bucha massacre. Ilya. Thank you. Sorry. May I interrupt? Actually, I have two co-founders of Meduzy here. But he's so young. I'm still young. Galina as well. Yes. OK. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So maybe I'm an activist, but I'm still a journalist. So that's why I'm not answering your question directly as all journalists do, but start with some background here. So yes, surely thanks. I was in Meduza until 2018. And I left this wonderful, happy, medium Russian landscape for a couple of years, completely non-toxic and the perfect place to work. So when I was there, when I was a publisher of Meduza, and Galina surely remembers, we made a lot of speeches about the perfect storm of Russian media, about crisis of empathy, of a lot of such things. And so I left journalism for three years, and the war started, and I came back. And I just remember the topics, and I think, ha, ha, ha, perfect storm. OK, same thing, but please add no money income at all. Everything is blocked. And so crisis of empathy, we didn't know what is the real crisis of empathy, we didn't know what is the real crisis of empathy because after the one year of war, we can compare it, but I think people don't want to know anything about the war anymore and we see that, so when the butcher started, it was like horror for everybody. Everybody read about it. Then when you see another massacre in another city, it doesn't bother people. When you see the bombing of the house in Dnipro, yeah, this is a story. The next day there is a bombing in Kramatovsk, nobody is interested in it. So the crisis of empathy is fantastic. So, and that time, I remember all these conversations you need to find this information you need to change the minds of people it was impossible that time surely it's impossible now and I think there is the only way to change people minds is to switch off the TV and where if a journalist is impossible even if they are activists impossible but this will change anything we can only work with people who are against the war already and actually even on we see the public polls and I'm going to your answer and we see the public polls will see that which are completely false but even on this polls we we see that tens of millions, dozens of millions of people who are against the war, and this is more than Medusa audience, this is more than, I think, all audience of the independent Russian media, yes? How we can work with them. So what we're trying to do, surely we're much smaller than Medusa, much smaller than Tevoren, we're much more activist, what we're trying to do? We're trying to talk about the war, to show the war through the people's stories. Yes, we are not about politics, we are, our main story is how people trying to survive this war, how the Russian army destroy people's lives. Yes, so we're trying to show people, yes, so we should show people's stories. But we're trying to show people, yes, we should show people stories. But we're also trying to help people. So help desk has two parts. First part is the media part, when we tell people stories. And the second part, we're helping people. So what we're trying to do, so we're trying to show people that in every situation, even in such horrible situation when you are right now, you can help and get help. So if you read such story, what you can do? Sometimes you can spend your money as a volunteer. Sometimes you can send money. And actually we see right now, and I think this is truly great, that so many Russians still in Russia want to send money for people to Ukraine yes the doors had the campaign for generators yes the whole had the campaign we just raised like two millions of rebels so people want to help us they money still it's completely so this transfer for government yes you just send the money to some Russian cut. Everybody sees who you are, but people still do it. And sometimes people need help. And what we can do. So why we are activists? Because we have a second part. This is a support part. We have a 24-7 hotline for people from Ukraine, from people from Russia who need help, who need legal help, who need psychological help, who need some informational help, who need to leave the country, who need to leave the occupied territories, who need to et cetera, et cetera. So actually we're trying to do the both parts and actually our journalistic part is completely journalism. So this is independent editorial team, and this is independent service. So our customers, the people who need help, but while we're getting the census, we understand much better what's happening in Russia. Because right now it's really hard to understand what's happening in Russia. Even if we have some correspondence there, they're anonymous, you can't have a lot of people there, and this is really hard to understand what's happening there from abroad. And I can compare it, because when I walked in Meduza, I think I traveled to Moscow like every month, sometimes every couple weeks, right now, so I have up to 10 years in prison can spend in Russia, so after my case, so I couple of weeks. Right now, I have up to 10 years in prison spent in Russia after my case, so I can do it. Actually, I don't understand what's happening there. Yes, I left another country, a completely different country a year ago, and the only way to understand it is by people's stories. Who don't want to be published, they just ask for help. So we're trying to combine the things. I think this is more like an experiment, but I think we helped like 50,000 people already in half a year. I hope we helped. Thank you. Galina, I forgot to say that Galina received last year the award of Committed to Protect Journalists, one of the few Europeans who received the award. Galina, you said that there is something now like proxy journalism. How do you learn what is happening underground in Russia? Are there people there? Do you have volunteers? How does it work? You know, when the war started, we had to evacuate all our reporters from the ground. We evacuated 25 people with their partners, kids, pets, even rabbit. Yeah, in two weeks. So all staff writers are now in Riga and Berlin, but when we started Meduza, we organized a summer school of journalism, so we built a big network of journalists inside Russia, and now they are working for us. and now they are working for us. Now we are undesirable or unwanted organization and any cooperation with us is punishable from a fine of 500 euros up to six years in prison if you help us financially, if you have a Russian passport. So now we are working. We call it proxy journalism or proxy reporting. We have our reporters here in Riga and Berlin. They are searching databases. They are searching for topics. They are calling. They do all this ground research work, and then they get connected with the people from the ground. One person, one task. You call one journalist and ask him to go to this place and see this building or to go to this event and ask this question to call these people so it's like a mosaic and then we gather it and we call it proxy journalism and it's the only way to make reporting from the ground and, since we were labeled as an unethical organization, more than five experts and our contributor writers refused to work with us because they could face up to six years in prison for cooperation with us. I would just like to say that we wanted to, I invited a couple of journalists from Russia to come, and they told me, I think they're online, I'm not sure, they told me they cannot sit next to Galina at the same panel. They would have liked to come, but they just could not sit because that is a criminal offense. Actually, we have two criminals here. And yes, sure. I'm not convicted. Yeah. And he's OK. Tikhon, you are TV. I have two questions. One is, how do you get the images when you are all abroad? That's one thing. But another thing that interests me, and I'm not a Russian speaker, but I see some clips of the first channel of Russian TV, Solovyov, and his propaganda. And when I hear what they say during these debates and what Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia Today says, I'm just wondering, do they believe what they say? Because they're like bombing Berlin one day. Do they believe or they get drunk afterwards? I really don't know. Do they believe what they say? That's one question. And the second question is, how do you work? How do you get images? TV is all about images. Well, as for Russian propaganda figures, frankly, I don't know. I think part of them truly believe in what they are saying. Part of them made themselves believe in what they are saying because they don't have any way out of the situation. The only way is to the prison, because they are war criminals. And the only way for them that they have is to stick with the situation and continue doing what they are doing, because they would die with the regime. They have no way out of it. But I'm not a shrink. I don't know what's in their heads. If we look at their history, we know that some of them were liberal journalists before. But Vladimir Putin used to say very much for liberal things in the 90s. So maybe people, people, people change. But as for the situation on the ground, it's a very big problem for the TV reign. And we think that it will become even a bigger problem because we are always one or two steps behind Medusa. Medusa was declared as foreign agent in April 2021. We were declared as a foreign agent in August. So we have two more months until being declared an undesirable organization. And it will become even a bigger problem because Medusa could talk with people on an anonymous basis and it's impossible for a TV station to change faces and voices of each and every source. So what are you going to do? Well, we don't have all the answers. As for now, it is still possible to get footages and get pictures and get comments from Russia thanks to brave Russian independent journalists still working within the country, especially in the regions. Thanks to internet and social media and people on the ground who are ready to talk to TB Rain. Thank God it's not 1975, we are not Radio Liberty, there is no Iron Curtain yet, and the internet somehow works in Russia, but we see obstacles every week. For example, a couple of weeks ago, we were filming a story about Belgorod region, it's the region on the border with the Kharkiv region in Ukraine, and we were making a special report on the situation there because they are being bombed also and one of our our cameraman Stringer he was traveling in the car with a volunteer and volunteer agreed to help him and show him all these fortification measures being done by the government on the region. So in 10 minutes, he turned this guy to our cameraman, to the police, the volunteer. So it's not that easy for the moment. We, for now, we managed to do it, but we perfectly understand that being on the ground and being in Riga or in Amsterdam or in lovely Vienna or wherever you are, these are two completely different things. It's obvious that you, I mean, we, are somehow little by little, we are losing the sense, the smells, the colors. We are not seeing, we are not feeling them as much as we would feel them when we're in Moscow and when it's like this to buy tickets and go to Samara or to somewhere else. But again, thank you internet, thank you people on the ground, thank you audience which is ready to give us information and give us footages and pictures, but it is hard and will become harder. You were shaking your head. I want to say that COVID helps us to work distant. This really helps right now for Russian journalists. You can be everywhere to work. Before I ask the audience for questions, what are your red lines in what you report? You will report Russian crimes. Would you also report what the Ukrainian army does, or there are red lines? Do you feel there are red lines set by the donors of what your topics are? Yes, this is what we talked about on the phone. So this is, I think this is the main question. You talked on the phone, you prepared the answer. So this is, I think, the main question. You talked on the phone, or you prepared the answer? Yeah. Yeah. We talked for an hour, actually. So I have a lot to say. Please wait. So I think everybody has a different answer to this question. My question, my answer is that if you are a Russian journalist and your country is bombing and another country and killing the people, so you can be objective, yes? You are not, you are part of this thing, yes? And it's impossible to have a helicopter view of the situation. So if you are, I don't know, from New Zealand or from US or from, I don't know, Argentina New Zealand or from US or from, I don't know, Argentina, yes, you can see it from both and be more objective. But so I can't. What does it mean? Surely facts are everything. You need to fact check all the information. But what Ukrainian part do right now and what they are doing, this is not my part of expertise. Yes, I can't, I don't know, investigate, so we don't make investigations, but still I think when Russian journalists, they don't do it, so for example, the corruption in Zelensky office, this is not our thing. We don't need to check what Ukrainian army do. Yes, there is a lot of other journalists from the West who can do it, but we, as Russian journalists, we can't judge Ukrainians. For me, this is unethical. And this is, as a journalistic theory, this is bullshit, yes? You can be like this. But when you're a journalist of the country, which is the international terrorist, so this is quite a different situation. And how to answer this question? I think everybody answers this differently, but I think that we can't judge or we can't be objective about what Ukrainians do. I think we need to write about Russians or about the average Ukrainians who are suffering what our country is doing. Thank you. Galina? You know, we are covering the situation in Ukraine and we have some obstacles because now Ukraine authorities demand visa for Russian journalists. You said that you have only female journalists. Yeah, and we had reporters from the ground and our reporters had been working in Ukraine since 24th of February, and all of them were female journalists, because if you're a male journalist with a Russian passport, you are prohibited to enter Ukraine. So we see this war through women's eyes. And all reporting from the ground were made by female journalists. It's very important. But now Ukraine demanded visa, and we could not obtain visa. But still we have some freelancers and contributor writers in Ukraine, and we are trying to cover all the situation in Ukraine, but at the same time, we had to invent special ads. In these circumstances, we havevedali to informacijo. Potrebno je, da ne skupajte s informacijo. Vsak dan je na naši poslušalci iz Ukrajine še ena od te posebne greščine. Ne bi lahko povedali to informacijo. V tem okolju moramo biti prijatelji. Ne skupajte s informacijo. we could not prove this information in these circumstances. Please be careful, please do not mix truth with information. But do you have a red line, you wanted to add something? Yeah, I'll add that later. Do you have a red line, something you cannot, what are the, do you think the donors expect something that you tell that is not? Never heard from donors. The main donor's concern is how to reach audience that you tell that you know never never heard from donors the main donors concern is how to reach audience on the propaganda influence nothing about Ukraine and I know for sure that even in 2014 I tried to reach my Ukrainian colleagues and said guys we're we are professionals. Let's collaborate. Let's cooperate. But, you know, eight years later, it's so hard, and I have no right to judge them as well. Thank you. They do not want to cooperate with us, and it's totally understandable. Thank you. May I add here? Yes, first, I wanted to add about donors because actually I had a huge experience with working with donors, and they never asked for something. This is the Russian audience think that donors ask something and we need to do something for them. They never ask, they just say do your work please and do it independently and thanks a lot for donors for that. Second about cooperation, yes actually we're in different situation here because we have a huge team in Ukraine. We have I think six people in Ukraine. I think four of them are in Ukraine. For us it's a huge team. They're in Kiev, they're in Odessa, they travel through the country and we have a wonderful cooperation. The interesting thing is that all of them are anonymous. Imamo čudovito skupino. Zanimivo je, da vsi so anonimni. To je zanimiva situacija, ker naša russka skupina je tudi anonimna. Zato, da so osebni govorniku. In naša ukrajinska skupina je anonimna, ker je osebna reakciji. Povnika. Povnika. Tukaj smo vse skupaj. Vsi smo anonimni. afraid of the reaction of the society. Public opinion. Public opinion. And so in this, we are together. Yes, we are all anonymous. But in this level, yes, but it's not public. The cooperation is great. It's still great. People understand each other. Journalists work together. And they meet. And that's totally OK. But this is really important. We have a huge team in Ukraine, and so we work in Slack, like I think everybody, and we have a channel there called Context. So if we have an idea to write about something from a Russian part, so we ask our team there, so we think like this, What is your point of view? And every time we think about something for Ukraine, it looks like we understood this completely different. So this cooperation is very useful right now. Thank you. Would you like to add something? And please prepare your question. And then, yeah. Well, I would say that the main red line for TV Rain is which media you are. TV Rain is a Russian media. And of course, when there is something, events in Ukraine which are of public interest, you should report on it. For example, a couple of months ago, there was a story when the video appeared where it seemed that Ukrainian soldiers killed Russian prisoners of the war and we reported on it. And then after the investigation, it became obvious that these prisoners of war, they violate the rules because one of them was with a gun. But when we're speaking, for example, about corruption in Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, about scandals in Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, Ukrainian Parliament, we have our corruption in our Ministry of Defense and we even have our own parliament. The main idea of Russian propaganda over the years after the revolution in Ukraine was to make Russian state TV Ukrainian TV, was to tell to the audience that what is happening in Ukraine is almost happening in their, our country, in Russian Federation. Because we were hearing the situation about Ukraine in each and every detail. Russian audience, audience of Russian state television knew names of members of Ukrainian parliament better than names of members of Russian state television, new names of members of Ukrainian parliament better than names of members of Russian parliament. So the most important red line, are you Ukrainian media? Then you report on Ukrainian problems. If you, or you are Russian media, TV is Russian media, and we should report on Russian situation. But again, if public interest tells us that this story is that huge, that we should report about it, da bi morali povedati o russki situaciji. Če se nam reče, da je ta glasbeni interes tako velik, da bi morali povedati o njem, tako bi to bilo. Hvala lepa. Vsak odgovor je vprašan. Andrej, dva vprašanja iz Presserklubu Concordia, potem se povedemo online. Andrej, se bi lahko pripravil. Dobro večer. Nazivam se Andrej Richter. Dobro te videti. Imam vprašanje ne o življenju v izolju, ampak o življenju v izolju. Kaj bi nameljali, Ilya, Galina in Tihon, Галіну та Тихон, 3-5 головних проблем, які потребують журналістів, які потребують допомоги? Що це за професійні проблеми, що це за особисті проблеми? Я цікавий, тому що я також заходжу у проєкті Консульства Європи, щоб допомогти. Я хочу знати вашу думку. Дякую. problems. I'm interested because also I'm involved in a project of the Council of Europe to help you and I want to know your opinion on that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Andrei. One more question is there? I see a hand in the back. Please get up. I don't really see. I see the hand. Hi, I'm Reinhard. I work for the Ebert Foundation in Riga. A couple of you I met. First of all, I would like to thank you. I think you're doing extraordinary work. It's so easy to say, you know, working in and around Russia. Incredible. I think everybody would agree to that. But the question is, Tihon, you said something about it's difficult to smell, to feel Russia being outside and having the problems Galina you were telling and all of us you were telling we are in desperate need for information we have very little under Yeltsin everything was known before the administration you themselves under the first years under Putin it was kind of possible. Now it's completely impossible. So my first question is, how do you cope with this tension that you know you have an audience, you could, they're waiting for that. That's one thing. And the second one is, Tihon, you said, there is an audience in between. Between those who, you know, is an audience in between, between those who read the propaganda and possibly believe it and the other ones who are questioning. What is this in between society? Can you frame it? Do you have numbers? Are they in the regions? Or is it just a guess of yours, and you're kind of building on that? Thank you. Thank you. Who would like to start? What do you need? First one person, and then Tycho of building on that. Thank you. Thank you. Who would like to start? What do you need? First, one person, and then Tihon, and maybe you. May I answer? First, and the main part of our needs is legal status for journalists. Because when we evacuated journalists from Russia, they obtained humanitarian visa D. And now these visas come to the end. And now we're trying to work with immigration services of Germany, Netherlands, and Latvia to prolong these visas or to obtain legal status resident permit or so on. So it's the main problem for them personally, because if you have no documents, you have no future. You have no hopes. Second is sources of information inside Russia, because most of them are working on anonymous conditions. And third is psychological mood, because most of them are in depression, unfortunately. And we totally understand it, and we obtain a special grant for psychological help for our reporters. But it seems to me that this team spirit is declining. Because, you know, we have no access to reliable statistics, country statistics. We are blocked in Russia, so we could count some audience, but previously you publish some article and you see feedback. And now we, every month we write a letter to our subscribers and to our ex-donators. And once we ask them, guys, we have a feeling that you stopped reading us or something like this. And we received more than 1,000 answers from our readers. Yes, we are so tired of war, but please go on. We promise we will start reading you again, but please we're so tired. We have to choose strategy for everyday life. We're tired of bad news. So you have no feedback as previously and now we're unwanted organization. Meduza is unwanted organization and even sharing our content is illegal, even commenting. So our team has no feedback from readers except those letters. And that's the problem. Even if you don't have a feedback then it's a disaster for everybody because Meduza huge, and the feedback is the main problem right now. Because journalists, this is more important for them than the money to have feedback for what they do. My answer is that I totally agree with the legal help. It's not only about help. At least don't, sometimes it's not about help, but don't bring us more problems with legal. І це не про допомогу, але не про більше проблем, бо якщо ми говоримо про півночі країни, півночі Європу, то це проблема, що ви росіяни, і тому вам потрібно робити більше. do much more yes and this is not you somebody will help you this is quite an opposite situation for example have and it's not only about Europe right now the situation that we have a journalist her name is she worked for me does actually for those to see the Maranova her fight fancy fiance is a man Saffron of who is jailed for 22 years in Russia and he came to Warsaw to get a US visa. And because she is a Russian journalist, she is on the special list, so she will need to wait for this visa for a couple of months. So this is not only about help, yes. Actually I see that in Western Europe, everything is better, yes. For example, in Germany, you can obtain a humanitarian visa. You as a Russian, you're not in some special list for people who need to double check, but still, still it's a huge problem, you as a Russian, you're not in some special list for people who need to double check, but still, still it's a huge problem, yes, still it's a huge problem. Actually, I think the journalists are the, one of the most privileged Russian, type of Russians, yes, activists and journalists, yes, we can obtain a humanitarian visa, but it's hard. Yes, activists and journalists, yes, we can obtain humanitarian visa, but it's hard. So when I think about some other Russians who don't work as journalists or activists but are against this and they are in need, so for them to leave Russia is hugely difficult, hugely difficult. This is one thing. And so legal help, surely. Second thing, I think this is money, actually, money for work and money for antidepressants. Depressants. Yes, so two parts of the money. I told yesterday to Mirjana when I came to Washington, D.C. to receive this CPJ award, the main award, National Security Service interrogated me for two hours. And who am I? And at the end, they say, congratulations for your award, and could you give us an advice? Name people who definitely should not enter the United States. Okay, I'll prepare a special list, but my ex will be the first. Tigon, please. OK, I'll prepare a special list, but my ex will be the first. Tigran, please. Well, I agree with Galina and Ilya. But you were also asked other questions. Yes, I maybe did not get the first question, so I will start with the second. It's based first on, I mean, all the sociology in Russia does not exist. It's impossible to have a sociology in such a state. Let's imagine approaching someone in Berlin in 1943, whether you support or not support what is happening. Of course, the majority would answer what they are expected to answer because otherwise they would be like in Russia. For example, in Russia, a couple of weeks ago, there was a poll made by Deutsche Welle on the streets of Moscow. They were asking people whether they support or do not support the sending of weaponry into Ukraine. And two men, for some reasons, I feel pity for them, they answer, of course they support it because Ukraine should win. Now they are being prosecuted by the police. And with all due respect, I don't understand what was in the heads of editors of Deutsche Welle to publish. Because they show their faces. Because they show their faces. Even if they told them that, guys, we are filming you, and it would be broadcasted, I think journalists should be a little bit wiser. Yeah. So there is no sociology. And it is based on what some specialists say. It's based on our observation, and it's based on the history. Because for example, when I talked to Bernard Guetta, who is a member of the European Parliament from France, he told me about the situation in France during the war in Algiers. Imagine your, our, and our couple of generations in Russia were born and raised on the idea that our parents and our grandfathers and grandmothers, they were fighting bad Nazis who were killing innocent civilians. It's the fundamental of the house called our life. Then suddenly the situation changed. And your soldiers, just like French soldiers in Algiers or Russian soldiers in Bucha, they are in a place of these Nazis killing innocent civilians. And so you have two choices. You do something. For example, you go and protest, but you could not because you would be beaten by the police and you would be accused of discreditation of Russian military. That's how it goes in Russia. Or you post something on Facebook and you face up to 15 years in jail because of spreading fake news information. Or you emigrate but it's impossible because you have 25 kids and you have your job and most of the countries banned you from entering because you are a Russian citizen. So you choose the second option. You don't do anything. You pretend that nothing is happening. So I think that most of people in this group in between, they pretend that nothing is happening and they are being... And Russian government wants them to pretend that nothing is happening. And they are being, and Russian government wants them to pretend that nothing is happening. There is no war. There is just special military operations somewhere far from you. It's not about you. You can go to the restaurant. It's still there. It's somewhere from you. Our goal, as I think about it, is to, so there is a Russian media called The Bell, and they have a newsletter. In each newsletter, they explain each news of the day with a question, what does this mean to me? I think our goal is to explain to this audience in between what does this mean to them. And our goal is to explain to the Russian audience in Russia that this war, even if it is so far away from you, even if your relatives were not sent there and were not killed there and did not kill anyone. Even if you don't have friends in Ukraine, even if you did not vote for Putin, and even if you do not support this war, this war is still about you in different ways with your daily life, with you. It was so nice to go to France each summer. Now it's impossible. Why? What happened? So I don't know if it's an answer to your question. Thank you. The thing is we have more questions. I'm really brief. I think it's important to say that the polls is not about people's thoughts. It's about people's choices. In an authoritarian country, people choose the safest option. So the safest option is to be agreed with the government. So what does it mean? It means that when the government will change, when Putin will die, everything will change. This is not people opinions. They just choosing the safest way to live in the authoritarian country. It's a surviving strategy. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Daniela, please tell us the questions from the online audience. I have three questions. The first one is by Tessa Siskowicz from the Austrian weekly Der Falter. And I think it was already answered in part first to thank you for your important work and then for Galina you said it is wishful thinking to hope to change public opinion of Russians but still could you comment on this are you becoming more popular the longer the war goes on and more Russian soldiers die but I think you already said something on that and we have a second question from Poland by Galina Spidniewska. Sorry for my pronunciation. I like deep Polans. Question one, do you see any worthy successor to Putin, and how do you see the political future of Russia leaning towards democratic values or the continuation within the authoritarian grip? And why are you moving to Berlin or Amsterdam? And then there is a question by Julia Belinskaya, who is a researcher at the University of Vienna. She has been following your work for years now as a researcher and she knows about Samizdat platform, but do you see any possibility of a major network that would somehow unite the journalists in exile? Do you see a need in this? Thank you. I think Russian journalists in exile are now more united than it has ever been in Russian modern history. It happened after, I would say that it happened at the beginning of 2021 when Russian government started to use the so-called foreign agent law against the journalists. And, for example, we had this marathon against this law, and six or eight media organizations were co-organizing this marathon. And, of course, after the beginning of the war, Russian independent media, in exile or not in exile, became more united than before. We are not competing now, we are not like fighting on social media each and every minute with each other. We have same goals, we have same enemy, and we understand that we should be together here. How about this question about the future, political future of Russia? One million dollar question. May I first answer about relocation? We are not leaving Riga. We're just spreading Medusa's unit all across Europe. Our headquarters is still in Riga, and we will stay here as long as we could. But we just want Riga is too small to be safe, frankly speaking, and we just want to spread our units all across Europe to be sustainable and to continue broadcasting whatever bad could happen. TV Rain is also moving from Riga because something happened. So we had headquarters in Riga and we had two small studios, one in Amsterdam, another in Tbilisi. But unfortunately we were getting a lot of obstacles from Latvian government since our relocation. Also, TV Rain made a couple of mistakes on air. And as everyone in the world, we are not perfect. But we think that the reaction from the Latvian government, the Latvian media regulator, was inadequate to these mistakes and our license in Latvia was revoked on December 6th and now we are in a legal process with a regulator in the court. But in the meantime, we received the license in the Netherlands and we say thank you to the Dutch government for providing us with this license. And now due to having this license, we are moving our headquarters and most of our staff to Amsterdam. It's not good news because we spent a lot of money, a lot of donors' money to relocate to Amsterdam, to establish there, to settle Amsterdam, to establish there, to settle down, to Riga, to settle down, to buy equipment, etc., etc., etc. Now we have to do this thing once again. We will keep part of our team in Riga because it's impossible to take 60 people and to relocate into Amsterdam. Amsterdam is much more expensive than Riga. Apartments, salaries, and everything, et cetera, et cetera. Again, this decision by Latvian media regulator, in my opinion, was inadequate, and we thank Latvian Association of Journalists who supported TV Rain here and also think that the decision was inadequate, but we have what we have, unfortunately. So no thoughts about a political future of Russia? You know, I just do not want to make a prognosis because I used to say, and I'm very fond of so-called negative thinking so you have to be prepared you have to decide what next could kill you but at the same time we have this brilliant book of Nicolae Plea with the name it was forever until it comes to the end nobody knows frankly speaking how and when it comes to the end even my problem my problem is that I'm optimist and the Tiberian used to have this slogan optimistic channel now we are sometimes thinking about changing to a realistic channel or a pessimistic channel or a depressive channel. But I think that I hope for the better future for Russia. We know that we have these tens of millions of audience of Russian independent media. As Ilya was mentioning, even in official polls, the number of those who say, I do not support the war, is much even bigger than these audience of Russian independent media, which means that we should work more to get them. I think these people want to deserve better future than they have today. And the future of Russia, I think, depends on couple tracks. First, the situation of the ground in Ukraine, unfortunately, of course not unfortunately, situation in Ukraine, of course. The second, work of independent media in telling people how the real situation is looking like. Third, the situation with the economy and sanctions, etc. And the fourth thing, it seems to be forever until it came to the end. Thank you. Ivan? Hvala lepa, Ivan Krastev in hvala za zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo zelo z but how we are not going to hurt you. Because in order to change the opinion of anybody, people should have the feeling that you're part of the same community. So even the Russians that want Russia to lose the war, for them Russian army is their army because their kids are going to be mobilized there. And I do believe that this is part of the story that I see that can become a problem because you are outside of Russia. We expect you to cover in the way the Ukrainian or German journalists are going to cover. I do believe the moment you start to do it, you're going to lose your core group, not simply basically the people who are part of the propaganda because they want to see all this change through the eyes of god that they're living from and for me this is the story to what extent and how you can basically convince us the european public opinion not so much the ukrainians i very much agree with they're in a totally different situation to allow you to speak the language which is relevant for your da lahko govorim na svoje glasbe, ki so zelo pomembne za svoje odbite. Zdaj, srečo, ker je naša armija ena naših težav, ker je Tiberija v Latviji povzročila za uspelo uspelo vzpelo v vrstu. In s vseh svojih respektiv, je to zelo zgodno, ker vzpelo v vrstu je uspelo v kontekstu, da je naša armija vzpela v zelo zlome zvrsti. ridiculous because words our army was used in context our army is committing terrible war crimes uh the idea of russian propaganda again that there is no war there is special military operation there is no army there is something and it's it's comfortable for a lot of people in russia to think that guys it's not our army because there is no war. It's something somewhere. And we tell them, it's our army. If we say our army, it doesn't mean that our boys, we root for you. No, this is our army. I have a red passport. I'm a Russian citizen. These guys are also Russian citizens. I spent all my life there. And I want to go back when the situation changes there. But it's our army, unfortunately. It's not the army from Mars or from another planet. It is our army, and it is just like it is our problem. Russian war in Ukraine, it's our problem. It doesn't mean that I glorify the army or I glorify the problem. It's a completely different thing. I admit that it is our problem and we have to deal with it. And I think it's a very big mistake expecting from Russian independent media to become Ukrainian media. At the very moment when Russian independent media would, just like, I don't know, for example, Agency Union, when Russian independent media start to use words as orcs, Russian russhists, etc., we would lose 70% of our audience in Russian Federation. It's a very difficult thing to find right words, and we are trying to do it, but our army is absolutely not the problem here. The most hot discussions in our working channels are about words, how to use it inside our team, and what can I say? The hottest discussion was after our publication of the research of Shuraburtin come to the darkness and try to find humans. He came to all across the Russia, and he made more than 100 deep interviews with the people who supported war and then we published and it was scandal because nobody wants to look at the mirror and see the truth, the real face. Yeah, the words are everything actually. So we also have these discussions about red flags. You can write the brilliant piece and there will be truth and it's totally understandable, but you can add one wrong word. Yes, absolutely. And even Ukrainians or Russians will understand that you are just foreign for them. You are not the media you want to read. The red flags are everywhere. Vsega je samo nekaj, kar se jim ne zdi. Nekaj, kar se jim ne zdi. Rada je vsega. In lahko nekaj napisate, in lahko jim nekaj ne zdi. In potem razumete, da je nekaj, kar je za nekaj kompletno neopravljivo. Moja ljubezen je, da ne bo revolucija v Rusiji mogla biti. Ker v sloveni My favorite joke, that revolution in Russia is not possible, because in a slogan, somebody will find the mistake. Thomas? Please introduce yourself. Yes, Thomas Seifert from Wiener Zeitung. I have actually two questions. Question number one is, to what degree do you think that the Russian public is willing to deal with the victims? I mean not Ukrainian victims of course because as you said the propaganda does its work but Russian victims and especially is there some sort of let's say could it cause a separatist movement because most people dying as I understand is from Kabardino-Balkaria, Circassia, Dagestan, Buryatistan, all these places, not from St. Petersburg and Moscow. Question number two, this war, in my mind, is convenient for Putin, just as World War II was convenient for Stalin, because if you put your society on a war footing, if you're an authoritarian leader, that's great, right? So I'm wondering what you think about that, that the war actually is helping Putin to cement his rule and to go down the path of even more authoritarianism. Thank you. Thank you. Just hold on. One more question. There is in the back, and please introduce yourself. Thank you. I'm Stephanie Harte. I have a question to Ilya, because I can see that there's a lot of flexibility and ingenuity as well in the way that the Russian journalists are working in exile, but also still in Russia, and you have lots of hybrid forms, like helping, like yours. Do you see some interest in your host countries to learn from you and to, you know, the way you're far more advanced when it comes to digitalization and to crowdfunding and all these kind of things, or is there no one who's actually thinking about that? Thank you. You wanted to start? Yes, I can. Actually, I want to start with the first question. So surely, I think it's important to mention that most of the people who were killed in the Russian army are not from Moscow and St. Petersburg, yes? And that's why it's something like a colonial war for Russia, because a lot of people are from Buryatia, from Yakutia, from Caucasus, and so on, so on, so on. Not from capitals, yes, at all. The second thing is that about Putin, and I think this is important, and this is about the future of Russia, because this war will be convenient for Putin if, so actually it depends on you, it depends on the West. Yes, if we will continue to talk about we need to stop this war right now, we need to give Putin what he wanted in the Donbas, yes, it will be convenient for him. If there will be more talks about the victory of Ukraine, so we don't know what will be at the end, but we will have more chances to make this war unconvenient for Putin. Yes, and about your question about our practices, surely we think that we're making the best journalism in the world. We need to think about it, but yes, actually, for me it's important that even in this situation to find the new ways to make a journalism, and this experiment was combining activism and journalism, which is all in journalistic theory, it's completely impossible, yes, to be the same things in one. So yes, I think this is important. I think, so how to combine help and journalism, I think it's workable not only in Russia or in Ukraine, but in many other places where people have problems with their governments or with their environment, yes. Thank you. Anyone else wants to add something? were killed on the battlefield, and how is it possible to be patient and to be silent about this? You know, once in an hour reporting, I read the interview with the mother who lost her son, and she said, okay, I could not return him, but I have two grandkids to raise. So they paid me, and I use this money for my grandkids. He is dead. And it's terrible, it's awful, but it's right. You could not imagine the level of poverty inside rural Russia. And this so-called dead money, it's a chance for women to raise children. Our time is up. I am doubting, but I will still ask Galina one question. We had a talk with Galina at the beginning of 2021, before the war. And she said this phrase that I have repeated so many times, the winter will be long and there will be no spring. Is there end to winter, Galina? Winter is here. At least it's not a nuclear winter, yes. Winter is here. At least it's not a nuclear winter, yes. You know, the winter is here for us. And it seems to me that I say goodbye to hope to see Russia again. Thank you, frankly. Well, I have no chance to return in the nearest future. Well, but at least you're doing this incredible work and we admire all of you. I thank everybody. There is a 20 minutes. Let's give an applause to our panelists. Okay, well, I hope that you have recovered with a coffee and with a talk, and this is now our second panel that will be moderated by Anna Litvinenko, and it's rather different from the first one in the respect that Irina decided to stay in Russia. She came from St. Petersburg yesterday, and Kirill deals with local media, and Anna will explain and ask questions and moderate. Thank you, Anna. Yeah, thank you very much. As Mirjana said, we have here representatives of two important groups also of Russian journalists and one of these brave journalists who stayed in Russia and still work there. And Irina Tumakova is special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta and Novaya Gazeta Europe. She's actually also a foreign agent. That means she was labeled by the Russian state as a foreign agent and that means that she has also difficulties and more threats in her work, but still she decided to stay in Russia. She also travels a lot, and prior to the full-scale invasion, she also covered Donbass, so she's really a very experienced journalist and working on the ground. Kirill Artyominka is from St. Petersburg. He is general director of Bumaga Media. That's a really great and important portal, news portal for St. Petersburg and the region, and their independent portal. They didn't only cover politics, but also politics, protests, but are and were very important, like a center of community life in St. Petersburg. They build up really a nice community, did some events in St. Petersburg, like science slams, really big festivals, et cetera. So they're very prominent in the city, but also covering politics. And from the first day of the Fuske invasion were the anti-war and had to also relocate the majority of their team outside of Russia. So my first question comes to Irina. Could you please tell us why did you decide to stay and is it still possible in Russia to do journalism because it's kind of outlaw, you know, like it's illegal to name war war. So how do you deal with that and how do you work as journalists in Russia right now? I'd like to apologize for my English. I live in Russia, and I have no practice. So that's why we have Grigory. He's our interpreter, so he will help. First, I have three dogs, and that's why I can't go out of Russia. And the second, I need, it's necessary for myself, I need to work in Russia, I need to see all these horrible things by myself. I need to talk with Russian people, I need to ask them mood and so long. And I lived half of a year outside of Russia several years ago, and I know this effect. When you lose this feeling of country. You, in one moment you understand that you even don't know what to ask, what to think, and that's why I need to see it by myself. I need to see it by myself. And one more thing. I understood that it's necessary to talk with Russian people with face to face, maybe. To explain something. First month I thought that it's impossible to explain something to somebody, but now I understand it's possible. Step by step, but it's possible. step by step, but it's possible. I ask questions, and I hear their replies, and I feel that they understand something, and many other things why I work in Russia. And maybe, like what you just said, that you kind of think now that you can talk to these people, I think was also one of the topics in the first panel. How do you address, how do you reach out to the people who are not like oppositional, not like the core audience of Novaya Gazeta, right? Talk to them, and for many, the conclusion is actually they give up. You're just like really people don't want to talk about it, don't want to see, even though they have this information. And your experience is different. You traveled now also to Siberia, as I understand. Maybe can you tell us a bit about the mood or what you experienced talking with these people? Is there any possibility to these people? Is there any possibility to address them? As you said, how do you talk to them? What is your experience? And as far as there is no reliable statistics about what is the mood, what is your conclusion about this? I speak with people not like journalists. Because when I say that I'm a journalist, I'm always afraid that someone would report on me. That's why often I don't say that I'm journalist. I just ask questions and listen. Go to any place, like just to move and so on. For example, I see the woman who sells cucumbers on the road. I go to buy these cucumbers and ask questions. In jaz sem bila prišla kajtati kukurke in vprašati vprašanje. In prvič v svojem življenju sem začela uskričati … …zaključujem ljudi, ki jih ne znajo. Ne sem to prej naredila, ampak moram to zdaj, ker je to potrebno. I must do it now because it's necessary. I need to have proof. And I talk with people, and I understand maybe now because of this, I understand more things than before when I asked questions only as journalist. And what do you understand? Like what, for example? I understood that many people are afraid to understand all these horrible things about their country. It's the mainest what I understood. They are afraid to take information. They are afraid to use source of information. They don't want to hear anything. Only when you begin to ask questions and they begin to look for answers, they begin to, maybe this or maybe that. And I have to have feeling in which moment I have to go away, because it's dangerous already. Dangerous also for them or for you? For me. For you, that they can report on you, right? Yes. Okay, were there cases that you were like, people would report or something, say no, she's suspicious? One moment in Russia when I was afraid of this, I was in taxi. It's considered to be a manifestation of bad taste in Russia to talk to cab drivers, but I do it anyway. Because it's a good source of information about moods. And I asked him questions, I asked, he answered, and in one moment he thought, oh, you are Ukrainian. And in this moment I told him, stop, stop, I go away, go away, and it was ended, finished. and it was ended, finished. And two times I had this experience in Donbas, but it was in 2017 and it's another story. Okay, yeah, thank you very much. And now coming to Kirill and to your experience as local media exile, right? being really kind of exuberant, like what is your experience? Like how do you manage to connect to your audience still being abroad? Do you manage to get this feeling of the city, of the audience? And maybe also what was the reaction of your readers, like your community when they, when you just outed us, yeah, we are anti-war, we are going to exile or did you say that out loud that you go to exile? So what is your experience? Usually when we decide to say something and to announce something, we think about the consequences. So we didn't announce specifically that we went to exile because we didn't see any pluses in this statement because which pluses we can see. So okay, we can lose some of the trust of our audience because oh, those journalists who came to exile but we're still here, so why should we announce it? It was the first point. The second point was that not all of our journalists went to exile. So it was a very hard moment for any editorial office in the beginning of March 2022 when you stay in front of your people and you tell them, I do recommend you to go abroad. They ask me when. I say, in two hours. It was on the 2nd of March. They said, what? I said, yes, but in one hour. And they asked me, what will you do? I say, I'm already packed. Because if you want to keep on working as an organization, of course there are lots of the brave journalists like Irina who still are in the country, but if you want to set up the structure, organizational structure and infrastructure of financing the journalism, so you can do it now only from outside or combining outside with inside. And of course, months after months, we unveiled some of the facts about our being in Tbilisi, for example, and especially when we launched a new local media in Tbilisi with our team. Of course, we announced it and there was a great article in Meduza about us, so thank you very much for the coverage. And of course it became evident for our audience that we, so especially the management of the media and the main journalists of the media, are not in Russia. But it was absolutely okay because it happened like six months after the war started. And we still were working on the agenda, it was okay. And we set up the network of the freelancers, most of them are anonymous because of the security reasons, but it works out, so I think it's okay. But of course, yes, being a local media in exile is nonsense. And of course, the competitive point of any local media is being on the ground and being close to the audience. And we are lucky guys that we worked a lot on making the community around the media and making the very close connections to the sources and our readers before the war and for 11 years of our work so we now rely mostly on the community of readers who provide us with the photos with the stories with the anti-war pictures of anti-war statements on the walls with anti-war activism they describe on themselves because they trust us and I don't know how long it could be. It's our existential horror that we lose it one day because it's probably going to happen maybe in two years, maybe in three, maybe in five, but of course when you stay outside, it's hot. And were there some reactions you didn't expect or were some angry reactions? Speaking of the mood of the people in St. Petersburg, what is your impression that were some people who were unsubscribed and said, no, we are you like was like your core community that state five years before the war so in 2017 we created the sociological department consisted of one person in our media. And these guys are also attracted like some other sociologists who help us to study our audience. And so we still, it's an ongoing process, so we always ask questions to our audience about everything we do. And one of the crucial questions all the last year was about their staying in country or going outside because we in our bubble, in our journalist bubble, and our, I don't know, IT bubble, people from digital and the creative professions bubble, think that one million people are outside country and now everyone is immigrant no it's not true so the 80% of our audience is still so 85% of our audience the core audience person percentage is still inside country and it's important for them to feel not lonely in the situation when they are forced to feel lonely by the propaganda, because it's the idea of the propaganda to make people think that they are alone in their anti-war position. So everyone is for war, and you are the only person who is anti-war. So okay, yeah, you are sad and you are silent. But if you, as local media and not local, like nationwide media present that there are lots and lots and lots of people, okay, they are silent because they don't want to go to prison. It's okay. It's a normal decision. But they feel the same shame and the same horror and the same and they feel the same energy to fight back if they have courage so I think that 10% maybe 15% of our audience unsubscribed from the beginning of war because we stated very clearly naši gledalci, ki so od začetka vojne nezabavljeni, ker smo jim povedali, da je to krim in da smo proti tem še enkratnemu vzdušju našega državlja. Ali smo prejščili tisot in tisot let in poslušalcev in še vedno… hundreds and thousands of messages and letters of support. And we still, so we are not nationwide media, so we can save some donations from readers inside Russia and we still save the membership model when people pay for their subscription to Bumaga. And we also set up the commercial VPN inside Russia and 10,000 people using it and pay us monthly, so we still can earn money as a commercial enterprise in Russia, but we are always waiting for that one day it will be blocked, so just occasionally, and we are ready for that. Okay, and I think it's coming to my next question, because I'm a bit repeating myself, but I think it's an to my next question, because I'm a bit repeating myself, but I think it's an important question of how to address this audience, or finding innovative ways to address the audience. And I think what you mentioned was building the community. And I think in the next session, will tell us about feminist anti-war resistance, and which really builds on this building communities, and maybe not always talking about anti-war resistance, and which really builds on this, like building communities, and maybe not always talking about anti-war, but just bringing people together. And my question to both of you, and also to Irina, because you also write, of course you write to Novaya Gazeta Europe, but some of your, of course your work is also available in Russia, so for you, how do you address, like, what, is it, like, just the co-audience of the Novaya Gazeta you address? Or do you want, like, do you have this ambition also to address people who are, like, you know, in between, you know, maybe not really, like, a pro-war, but in between, you know, like, hesitant? How do you do that? And also to Kirill, do youill, do you find some innovative ways to address, to reach out to the people in this situation? The same way as before, I think, through words, through emotions, I think so, through language. I don't know, really, we know our audience. We know it good enough because Novaya Gazeta have many feedbacks, have a lot of feedbacks. We have letters from our readers and we know what they want, we know they want to know. In the first days of the war, we had incredible traffic, very big, many millions of readers. And it means that our readers have interest to this problem, have interest to the war. And, to this problem have interest to the war. And I think, like, I am our reader, and I do it, like, for myself. do it like for myself. I see, for example, when I was in Novosibirsk, you know, there was a big explosion of gas in Novosibirsk, and this house looked just like a house in Dnepr. And I stood near this house and thought, just like a house in Dnepr. And I stood near this house and thought, it's the same, or not just the same, but it's all not the same. And people around this, how they have to understand this. And I asked them, what do you see and what do you think about it? And... A number of times I asked them openly, what do you think of people in Ukraine А що ви обоєтм думаєте? not only to listen what they answer, but to see how they do it, how many seconds they think before to answer. And maybe I have to ask more people than before. Maybe I have to ask more people than before. For example, one year, two years ago, I had to ask 10 people, for example. And now I have to ask 20 people, 30 people to understand what do they think. And then after, I will use maybe two or three sentences. But it's important for me to understand what they think. And after this, I will understand what will I write. I think it's very interesting. Again, it highlights what you said before, how important this to be on the ground, to feel the ground, feel the people. And maybe also my follow-up question on that, like how is your experience meeting colleagues, talking to colleagues who are in exile? Do you feel this gap between like how you understand what's happening in Russia and how journalists in exile like understand that when you talk to colleagues? Do you feel this gap between how you understand what's happening in Russia and how journalists in exile understand that when you talk to colleagues? Do you feel this gap and there are some discussions about that? I'm afraid, yes, I feel it, but something I feel better than journalists something I feel better than journalists which are exiled, but sometimes I see that they understand something better than me. For example, I can't read patriotic publics. I can't read it. I can't look for information in these publics because I'm sick of this in real life. Ne lahko se na informacije v publicah poskušam, ker sem tega težavna v pravnem življenju. Ko jih prebim v publicah, je to za mene zelo. Zato sem izgubila vsak del življenja. but journalists which are exiled, they lose another part of life. And it means we have to work together, and for me it's a very good possibility because my editor lives outside of Russia and we understand each other. Thank you very much. And Kirill, about the innovative ways and new ways to reach out to your audience, how do you do that? ways to reach out to your audience. How do you do that? I think that if we speak about the work coverage, so I agree with Ilya that we learned a lot from pandemia. We learned a lot from, so about the remote editorial processes,. etc. etc. but also about the situation that we faced in our industry now it is news fatigue it is fatigue about the work coverage it's just a problem that people are tired of the horrors and we remember the beginning of pandemia when there was huge traffic about any statement that there is a new number of people who are in disease. And at the same time was the beginning of war, so people absolutely sticked to their smartphones and to the news feeds. But now people don't want to see it and everyone see the declining of the audience. But for us as local media it's very important to be a mirror of the daily life. And before the war we did a lot of lifestyle publications and it helped us to earn money because we did lots of native advertising so we were commercially breakeven. But now we still do some kind of lifestyle publications, but we try to make them very honest in the way of showing the consequences of war. So for example, we could make a listicle about the new restaurants that were opened in St. Petersburg in 2022, and it's very important to show that there is a life. There is a business. There are people who do something. It's not just like the scorched earth and everyone is crying. No, there is a life inside the city. But, of course, we make interviews with those businessmen who speak openly about the problems they have because of the sanctions that were made on the country because of the war aggression. And it's very important to stress that, okay, this publication could be made three years ago and could be totally different. And now we can't just write about restaurants like nothing happens. And it's the difference because you're just showing the agenda in a diversity and it's not just about the war and you can attract readers with this agenda because if you just write about the war agenda, especially if you're a local media because we don't have the reporters on the front line and it's strange for us to write about the events on the front line. Особливо, якщо ви – локальне медіа, бо ми не маємо випускників на фронталі. І це дивно для нас, щоб писати про такі відбування на фронталі. Звісно, ми пишемо про величезні терористичні атаки російської армії на українських громадян. Але, звісно, головним фокусом є Санкт-Петербург. Але, звісно, це має бути зроблено в дуже збільшеному рівні. Тобто, коли ви показуєте, що нормальна життя відбувається, але це не нормальне. done in a very combined way. So when you show that the normal life is going on, but it's not normal. OK. And could you also maybe zoom out a little bit on the independent local media in Russia? As you know, a lot of colleagues, and maybe to give an idea, are there some independent media left? Like we know St. Petersburg, of course, Є лише індепендентні медіа, як Санкт-Петербург, Сковська губернія, Байкал, Маніал? Є лише індепендентні спорти, індепендентні медіа? Так, минулого січня ми зробили проєкт з колегами з інши з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з колеги з кол and they were not only well-known youth media, they were also printed media in the Far East that was run by a 60-year-old journalist with his wife, and they were searched by the officials. So for me, it's very important to remind anywhere I am, for example here, that there are dozens of the great professionals inside Russia who still do what they can do. They try their best to cover the situation in the most honest way they can do, trying not to be in jail. And there are lots of, of course, there are lots of the regional media that support war, who are financed by the government, who are totally fascist at the moment, but there are lots of the media who are trying to balance, even if we don't like it from exile, but they make something good for the general understanding of the audience that what's going on. And there are lots of the media and journalists але вони роблять щось добре для розуміння всього Союзу, що відбувається. І багато міріантованих і журналістів всередині Росії, які намагаються робити доволі чесний журналіст. black as it could be painted, especially by, I don't know, by those of us who are totally discouraged. Yeah, thank you. I think it's often overlooked, like the role of regions and also difference in Russian regions and the level of freedom. Yeah, my last question before Q&A would be to both of you about how do you assess or experience the change in profession, your journalistic role during the last year, maybe also in some ethical, like red lines for you that you set for yourself before and after the beginning of the war, like how your role perception as a journalist has changed? The main is I can't more ask questions to officials because I'm a foreign agent in Russia. I have no other red lines when I write for Novaya Gazeta Europe. And I have many red lines when I do my articles for Novaya Gazeta because of law, because of Russian law. Бо я не хочу вбивати своє новини. Я не можу використовувати слово «війна». Я не можу про військових. I can't write about soldiers now. We can write nothing about them. And when I do the article for Nova Gazeta Europe, I don't know about red lines. I don't know what is that. It's my job and I have to do my job, and that's all. I have to have information. I have to ask opinions. I have to see the picture. And I don't know what's red line. Okay, thank you. But it's interesting that before you mentioned that there were, of course, in work practices, there were some changes, like how you talk to people, that you don't reveal your identity sometimes, which was impossible before, out of ethical reasons. But right now, there is some change of rules because you have to somehow... It's maybe even easier when I don't need more to ask opinion of officials. It's very good. OK, good. So you don't talk to them. Yeah, Kirill. From the very beginning of our work, we have been focusing on the journalism of facts, not journalism of opinions. Ko se pripravljamo na našo delo, smo se skupaj skupaj skup stvarij, vseh komentarjev na socialni mediji. In to je zelo čisto, in je zelo bolj emočno, kot je bilo prej. Mislim, da je to pilarizacija zgodov in odbora, is the matter of the polarization of the journalism of the audience, but I think it's normal now, the situation nowadays. I also think that, so for Russian media, it was quite a sad situation that over the years, we were pressed by censorship regulators, Bili smo vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi vzpredi v to je nekaj malo. Ne delajte to, ker ni o tem nič. Ni o pravi, ni o čutovnih faktih. Je samo ta malo situacija, v kateri lahko uspeš uspeš simboli, in ne pravi svoje. Zdaj se mi zdi, da je to zelo pomembno, kot sem prej prej spomnil. To je kratka na ska na sredstvo, ki ne smeta, da se je to nekaj tragedij, ampak v polnopremenu je to stvarično problem. Mislim, we became much more free in everything we do because we are not, so we are blocked in Russia, but for any unknown reason, we are not the foreign agents. But we behave like we already lost everything and we don't have anything to save at the moment. We just behave like we want. Saj smo vse završili in ne imamo nič, kar se bo začelo urešiti. Vse je bilo tako, kot bi želeli. In je zelo zanimivo, da ne imate nič črne linije, če se ne počutite, da se počutite v državi. In to je velika težava. accept the safety of your people inside the country. And it's a big problem because you always think of the freelancers, of the people even who are not journalists, for example, project managers, community managers who still live in St. Petersburg. And maybe it's the only thing that influences our decisions, the thought of the safety of our contributors and employers and friends and colleagues. Thank you very much. And I will open the floor to questions. Yes, please. There are two. My name is Leo Gabriel there are a certain number of peace initiatives which have been taken since the war started, the latest one is introduced by China but also before there was in Brazil and in Istanbul and so on I wonder if that plays a role there was in Brazil and in Istanbul and so on. I wonder if that plays a role in your writing and in your conversation among journalists, and if that is also so heavily sanctioned by the government in Russia, or is that a way where you could combine what you feel with an objective reality one day? Thank you very much, and we'll take the second question. Hello, again, Stephanie Harter. I have a question regarding the future of journalism, the training of journalists and is journalist an attractive profession for young people in Russia and how do you actually ensure that it's going on? Thank you. So please. Starting from the second question because it's fruity. So what I think there are still journalists faculties in Russian universities. The experts in my university, in St. Petersburg State University, where I did my bachelor, so the tutors there, the professors there, are now the authors of the so-called expertise that are becoming their reason for sending people in jail. za poslušalcev v življenju. Tako da jih skrivajo svoje sredstev, ki jih predstavljajo v pravi, kot predstavljanje........................ So it's a total shame and to be honest it's my personal shame about my university and about the thing that happened to the place where I spent four years. But this faculty still has a big competition for the students to come. It's the one side. The other side are the independent initiatives of training the young journalists that are presenting everywhere, some capacity buildings that are made also with the donors' help and also abroad. And they also have great competition among the young journalists who want to study the profession and to make the independent journalism. The third point of that, of course, I would never advise, for example, me 10 years ago, to do journalism, but there are still people who want to do it, the young people, and I don't know what it's about. It's just about the situation now that the profession is kind of illegal. The real profession is kind of illegal. But at the same time, there are lots of people who for some reasons want to do it. I don't know why. There is no money, no honor, because it's mostly anonymous now. No mercy, no happiness, but people want to do it. I don't know why. But I still want to do it. I don't know why. Yeah, and the other second question, or maybe Irina. I don't know what to answer. The first question was about the peace initiatives. Are they covered within Russia? And can you talk about it? Are you talking about it? I think they are covered a lot. I think especially the peace initiatives in regions where lots of Russian immigrants came, for example in Georgia or in Armenia or in other countries where they became places for Russian immigration. And it's interesting that lots of peace initiatives, so let's say directly, are organized by Russians. For example, I know quite a lot about Georgian landscape, and I think all the funds of support of Ukrainians, refugees, except maybe one or two, are organized by Russian immigrants and Russian anti-war activists. Even they want to present it like Russian initiatives. So some of them are really camouflaged under the international initiatives or Ukrainian initiatives or Georgian initiatives but they are done by Russians. But those initiatives that are done by people of other nations, of other countries, also were available and of course inside Russia they are covered but of course I think there is a split between two agendas agenda about the things that are happening inside country and the agenda is about the immigrant community and the gap is growing up is growing at the moment thank you yeah I have I have an online question to you, Kirill. You mentioned the interview you did on the restaurant openings in St. Petersburg. What about your interview partners? Are they afraid to talk about their problems caused by sanctions? Do you find people talking on the record? This is a question by Stefanie Pakomarka from Salzburg, a daily newspaper. It's becoming more and more complicated to find people who want to speak openly, but there are some people and there are still people who consider it their citizen, civil position to speak openly about their professional area. to speak openly about their professional area. So they think that they should make statements not about war crimes in Ukraine committed by Russian army, but about the situation within the industry, about the crazy stuff that happened with all the businessmen, independent private businessmen in Russia who are not connected to the big oil groups and Kremlin mafia but who are just doing their I don't know cafes, IT startups, other real estate business inside city and they really can't do what they do they can't provide the places so the labor places and so some people really want to express themselves this way and when we ask them if they want to be presented by their names or not they say I want to be by my name because it's my fight back with the fear Vse, kar želim, je, da se počnem z njim, ker se zanima moj boh. Ne bi se res respektoval, če bi govoril v završenem mesto. Hvala. Vesna Knježevic, kulturni predstavnik RTS. You know, it's for Irina or for both, I don't know. So you work under the conditions of anonymity, but by coming here, what does it mean for your safety? I mean, having your picture maybe published in the press here, how do you avoid the persecution in your work? Especially now, when you come back. You cuck. Kako se prehodiš od završanja v svojem delu? Saj danes, ko se vrneš. Nikakor. Ne ima morda. Ne mislim o tem. V Novom Gazetu ne poslušamo vprašanja, ali je to za tebe zelo težko ali ne. S tem delom. Na primer, ko sem bila v Samariji, with that work. For example, when I was in Samara, you know, I will say in Russian, okay? When we were in Samara, where the dead were buried in Makeevka, we were talking... We once went to Samara because of the bureaus of the servicemen who had died in Makeevka, Мы разговаривали. И мы с коллегой-оператором дважды побывали в полиции. had to go to a police station twice. On the first occasion, we were apprehended for an alleged participation in an alleged unlawful public gathering or meeting, which, in fact, had taken place in an empty square where there was no one but me, the cameraman, and the police officers. The police claimed it was a public rally. For the second time, we were detained was a public rally. The second occasion we were apprehended was on the charges of unlawful interview taking with citizens. And when we got to the car, the police were already waiting for us. We only realized later that they were already tracking us by the GPS beacon in the car. That particular incident was that we used a rented vehicle, and when we returned to that vehicle, we saw the policeman waiting for us there. It was only later that it dawned on us that they had been following us all along because of the GPS on both the occasions was a couple of hours of lost time in a police precinct. In a sense, we were legitimate because we had journalist IDs and the so-called mission mandates from our editorial office. Those are requirements for operating as a journalist in the field. But now, with Novaya Gazeta being completely illegal in Russia, there's no way I could just get away with three hours wasted in a police precinct. precinct. But this does not mean anything about how this could potentially have or what kind of impact this could potentially have on my work. I don't see any such impact. I'll just continue Два приходится добавлять. Ну, то есть раньше было одно правило, техника безопасности профессиональная везде и всегда. Теперь добавляется второе правило, нужно просто закладывать в командировке больше времени на всякие непредвиденные вещи. mentally more time to those troops for unpredictable circumstances. Thank you very much. There is another online question by Vladimir Ivanov. It's for all Russian panelists. Do you get legal support from your media management or from external law communities? And thank you to everybody. Excellent experience. Legal support. Legal support from. How to say, yes we do, but it's quite funny to discuss any legal supports in Russia, because there's no prominent legal procedures now. So of course there are, of course there are something that, Бо зараз немає відповідних правопорушень. Звісно, є багато роботи для лікарів, адвокатів та людей, які відповідні за допомогу політичним зберігачам, але є лимити. Наприклад, ми... Ми робили... Тобто ви завжди відчуваєте це як театр безпеки для ваших людей. Наприклад, коли ми робимо якісь ефенти, ми ще робимо ефенти у Піттісбургі. І якщо це публічне ефент, ми вирішуємо лікаря просто сидіти на керівці we hired the lawyer just to sit on the chair during this event because if the police comes so he can be more confident than our our team in speaking to them it's quite expensive but it's worth it because our people and the guests are feeling safer in the situation when they know that there is a loyal lawyer in але це варто, бо наші люди і гості відчувають себе в сфері, коли вони знають, що є власник в цій холі. Але, звісно, ми розуміємо, що це більше про інтернет-працювальну роботу, ніж про справжню інсурність. insurance. I just can ask, what you mean legal when you say about Russia? I feel that my management can help me, but I know that when something troubles, I have to do it myself. I don't think it's worthwhile to bother my management with my safety and security concerns. When I'm out in the field, I'm in a better position to deal with those issues myself. I had this incident in Belarus when I was covering the protests. в Беларуси меня задержали, посадили в автозак. У меня с собой было специально заготовлено три айфона. Один, который сразу отдавать при аресте, другой, который должен быть в кармане, третий на всякий случай. Один айфон я сразу отдала при аресте, с другого, когда меня посадили в автозак, я успела послать Муратову, главному редактору «Новой газеты», сообщение, что сижу в автозаке. И вот ровно в тот момент, когда ОМОНовец открыл that I was in this police vehicle and they were taking me somewhere. And the moment when a Belarusian policeman opens the door to, let's say, the captive's compartment in the vehicle was the very moment that Mr. Muradov chose to call me. The buzzer was off, but I was wearing a very thin jacket, and you could see the display going on. Допрос нужно было идти со своим мешочком полиэтиленовым с вещами. Я один из своих изъятых трех телефонов украла. Я просто провертила дырку в мешке и вытащила. Только для того, чтобы потом с этим телефоном попроситься в туалет и написать Муратову, что не надо меня очень сильно спасать. Но это шутки шутками, а на самом деле спас меня тогда все-таки Муратов. But these are just jokes, and in fact Muratov saved me then. And not only me, but a lot of Russian journalists, who were detained in Belarus by packs. Not just me, but lots of other Russian journalists who were literally grabbed by the dozen by the Belarusian authorities. He managed to reach the Russian embassy in Belarus in my life when I thought that I paid taxes for the rest of my life in this country well spent. Yeah, thank you. There is one more. Do we take or do we still? Actually, it's already 12. Should we close? Unfortunately, maybe you could also ask a question in the break. So I would just like to thank you very much for your work, for your bravery, really in this incredible, terrible situation, but you don't lose the spirit, you persist to work, and it's really like worth, we admire you. Thank you so much. Thank you. And we have two short presentations now. One is by Lolia Nordic. She is not a journalist. She is a feminist and anti-war activist. And from what I understand, your organization has a very special way of trying to communicate its message. She has about five minutes, or to seven. And then we shall have a very brief statement by Marie Frenet, who is from the cabinet of Vera Yurova, the High Commissioner. We thought that European Commission should be present, even with a few words. Thanks. Gloria. Thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you for everyone who joined the event here, and thanks for everyone who is watching online. I am not a journalist, as it was mentioned before, and I am a feminist and an anti-war activist, and before the war, I was involved in feminist activism for a lot of years, and right now I'm also in exile here. I had to leave my hometown a year ago after I had a series of arrests and house search. So today I will tell about the feminist anti-war resistance movement which was created the second day after the Fulski invasion in Ukraine. And our goal was to unite different feminist groups and different activists from different regions of Russia to build a network of people who are ready to confront this war and to do something. So I will show a small presentation where I won't focus on how we organize, I won't focus on what we do on the ground, how we help activists, how what people, what our activists in Russia do, what our activists abroad do, how we help refugees and many directions of our work. Today I will only focus on how we work with media and how we build our networks and how we reach different audience using different media tools. So first, when we began our movement, we started with basic social media accounts like Instagram and Telegram and Twitter and Facebook. Right now, we have a quite large amount of subscribers on Telegram and Twitter and Facebook. Right now we have a quite large amount of subscribers on Telegram. I can see how much is there, but it's like around many thousands of people. And I think it's one of the most popular activist anti-war accounts on Telegram, which was built on a grassroots level. war accounts on Telegram, which was built on a grassroot level. And we started doing it as an independent media run by activists, not journalists. So we were covering not only news, but we were asking ordinary people to send their stories, their experiences about the war. We had series of publications about the stories of Ukrainian women who were describing how they survived shields and how they're taking care of their families. At the same time, we had anonymous stories of Russian activists who were explaining how they are going through all the repressions in Russia. So for us, it was really important to platform the voices of the people who don't have such big media capital, but their stories are still important. So here's the screenshot of our Telegram channel, which now works as an ongoing, full-scale media. We have a team of activists who are monitoring news, who are writing articles, who are doing interviews, and who are making collaborations with independent media. And, I will take this back so it's important for us to collaborate with independent media also with regional media because we are very aware of the hierarchy which is going on in media some of the media are more well known and some regional media doesn't have a lot of audience. So we are interested in, you know, bringing more attention to the regional journalists and regional media in Russia. And we were, after several months since the full-scale invasion has started, we realized that we have a central audience which are predominantly young women from, I don't know, 20 till 40. And these are mostly women who already have political awareness and they are mostly anti-war and they are active. So we decided how can we use our platforms to reach different other audiences and we decided that we will just try to do everything that we can and we thought that maybe we can reach more conservative audience through more you know entertainment content through memes through I don't know jokes through different kind of internet content. And we decided to use a platform, WhatsApp, which is mostly used in Russia by, I don't know, sometimes more conservative audience, sometimes more older users who doesn't use Facebook and Instagram that much. And in Russian WhatsApp, there is a trend where people greet each other on major holidays with some kind of specific greeting cards and we decided to design very similar specific design of this WhatsApp greeting cards to infiltrate these cards with anti-war messages and on the first glance when you look at these cards, you just see the ordinary design that your grandmother can send you on WhatsApp or your aunt or something or someone to greet you on, I don't know, the 8th of March or Christmas or Easter. But when you read, you can see anti-war messages there. And we thought it would be a great format to create a viral content which can break out of this activist bubble, of this liberal bubble, and it actually did. We made a series of viral postcards on Easter. Some of them were with very cheesy jokes. Some of them were just like strong anti-war content. And they went viral. And our followers were describing how their grandmothers and their relatives were sending them this content. So it went so viral, so it finally reached the audience that we wanted to reach. So we also tried to reach more toxic masculine audience in platforms such as Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, and others. We tried to infiltrate so-called male public pages with these memes which are copying the type of memes that you regularly see in such male, you know, brutal social media. But we also were infiltrating them with anti-war content and jokes, and we thought that it will be another way to reach somebody we won't ever reach as a feminist anti-war resistance, because you know, in such places, people hate everything with the word feminism and maybe women in general. But that was only the meme, gif, jokes level. The other format that we created was an anti-war DIY newspaper, which is called or Women's Truth. We now have a small editorial office, online office, where a team of activists slash journalists create a new issue once in two weeks. And we share the PDF file so any person can print it at home and spread it in the public buildings secretly. We have also instructions of how to do it safely and anonymously. So people spread it on the student campuses, in the libraries, anywhere they can reach, anywhere it can be spreaded safe. And the newspaper is basically stories with anti-war content as well, but we were thinking how to spread it safely. So we decided to cover it and to design it as an ordinary regular newspaper that you can find in your neighborhood and take it for free. So it has a really specific design as well, and it has a really specific type of text and type of headlines. So if you're just going through it briefly, if you're just putting your glance on it, you will think, oh, it's just like a regular free newspaper for housewives or something, or just for, I don't know, older people, or just like people from the neighborhood. But when you start reading it, you realize that it's all anti-war content. It's stories about political prisoners in Russia. It is stories about how war affects our regular life, economy, our relatives, what are the risks of people who are getting mobilized, what are the risks of people who are getting mobilized, what are the risks of women in Russia. Also, we are infiltrating with some jokes and crosswords, also anti-war themed. And sometimes you can see, I don't know, stories about people who are, I don't know, doing activism on a really grassroots level. So, I don't know, really people of the older age, people who are on pension, who are going to the street protests and stuff. So we want people to see how people like them are being active. It's also important for us as a movement to put a lot of focus that in Russia, there are not only Russian people living. There are a lot of nationalities and ethnicities living in Russia. And right now, we are having a huge rise of the colonial movement in Russia. But the voices of Russian citizens of different ethnicities are often not being heard that much. So for example, we decided to make one special issue of our newspaper with Tuvinian activists, female activists. And it went out on Tuvinian language. And it was spread among the community. As well, we're doing collaborations with independent media, such as,,,, or. And when we are doing this collaboration, we are also trying to put a spotlight on the voices that are interesting for us and those voices who, in our opinion, don't get that much focus. So, for example, we were creating a material about how women who are working in the structural institutions, pro-governmental institutions, are trying to sabotage them by doing their work. It's a really interesting topic, and we were covering it, and we were collecting stories through our Telegram boards, trying to find these women, and they were trusting our organization, our movement, and they were able to share stories with us because they trusted us as activists. At the same time, we were doing different stories about how women in other countries are, what strategies do they use to confront the wars, to fight militarism, and to protect themselves. So we were doing interviews with activists and journalists from Rojava so our audience could see how other people in the different military situation tried to protest. And last two slides, because I have, my time is already passed. So we also are doing some original materials, also to put a spotlight on important forces. For example, on Sigma platform, we had several important articles and several important translations. For example, we were making an interview with Russian partisan women who are breaking the railways to stop military machines from going to the war zone. And most of the media were covering partisans in general, but we were the first ones to speak to the women from the partisan movement because due to the misogyny and sexism, most of the people think that only male partisans are doing this dangerous work, which is not true. So we uncovered that. And, for example, we did an interview with Boris Nemtsov's daughter, who is an important activist and human rights defender as well. And so we do many of these stories as well. Yeah, I think that's all that I had to say but if you want to learn more about feminist anti-war resistance you can follow our social media and you can ask me later and you can collaborate with us because we are really eager to find new allies and colleagues all over the world. Thank you. I would just like to add that Noya now lives in Vienna. For those journalists who would like to talk to her, she is right now in Vienna. So that's why we don't have a.. And the very last words before we go to lunch will come from Brussels from Marie Freinet. What does the European Commission have to say after these incredible panels? Marie, the word is yours. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Many thanks to Press Club Concordia for having me and for organizing this event. I'm here for Vice President Jourova, who is now in the US. This is why she cannot be with you. She's actually discussing the rights of women and the role of women journalists. So just to make a link with the also with the previous presentation. You heard today about the very important and very impressive work that Russian independent media are doing in very difficult circumstances. And I would like just to join the previous speakers to say how much we admire and how much we are thankful for the courage and the work that is being done. But of course, what we understand as well is that Russian independent media and journalists, they need more than our gratitude and they need our support. And this is what we are working on right now and what I would like to share a bit with you. There is an increasing understanding in the European Union that we have to do more to support Russian independent media so that they can continue their work in the EU in the best circumstances. Why is it so important for us? Because in the EU, we stand for media freedom, we stand for rule of law, and this is why we want to show this. It's our difference with authoritarian regimes. And we are within the European Union also having a lot of initiatives, and we discuss quite regularly with Press Club Concordia these initiatives to protect the journalist and we want to do more now for the for these journalists who are now in the european union and uh second we uh clearly uh understand that it's in our strategic interest that it's in the the interest of the european union to ensure that people in Russia have access to trustworthy information. And this goes hand in hand with all the things we are doing against Russian propaganda. We had sanctions against propaganda outlets. And so we feel that fighting disinformation and supporting media freedoms are actually two sides of the same coin, and that we have to do more to help independent media so that the audience is not lost in Russia, and this is something that was said today, and also that these media here, they can still continue their work. There are ongoing efforts today. The European Union, so the institutions, but also member states, they are supporting, especially also civil society, supporting independent media, and civil society is doing a very important work that we are supporting. But what we are trying to do now is to really step up the efforts. And Vice President Urova has been also meeting Russian independent journalists in different hubs in the EU. We were in Riga, in Amsterdam, and we will be in Prague next week because we want to understand the needs and what we can do in the best way. What we see from the meetings we have had is that we need to move from emergency support to long-term support. At the beginning of the war, I think that the idea was really to make sure that Russian independent media and also human rights activists could leave the country and could be safe here in the EU. Now, what we are working on is more on a more sustainable project in order to connect the apps within the European Union and create a structure that will also attract more money. Because what we see from the studies of civil society is that the needs for independent social media are about an additional €35-40 million in the next three years. So we see that also business models are being challenged with the world. We have also seen fantastic examples of how independent media are very innovative in developing new business models and this is something we want also to encourage innovation. Overall, we are working, I would say, on three pillars to simplify things. So people, content, and reach. In terms of people, I mean, the people are the Russian journalists and the media staff. And we adopted, adopted actually guidelines on visa agents last year with a specific focus on applications by independent journalists and also human rights defenders. All this remains very much in the hands of member states to deliver the work permits and so on. So we are in constant dialogue with the member states on this, to raise awareness and also provide support for, to help the journalists with administrative procedures and also other types of support like psychological support when it's needed. We're also looking at the best practices in the member states. For example, we heard very good feedback on the system in Amsterdam, so we also want to encourage the sharing of best practices across the member states. A second point, so we are working on support to the production of content in Russian. And we understand, and it's not only about news content, but also content, because this is how you can also attract people to news. Let's be clear when talking about EU support to content, there is no editorial interference, and that's not how we work here. It's really about encouraging also the synergies between media being of course independent media but also other European media providing content in Russian I mean we have public service media having some channels in Russian or also other commercial media also developing content in Russian I hope you can still hear me. I will not be long because I know that we are late already. The third point I wanted to mention is the cooperation with online platforms and all the technical support that we could try to help provide or support. try to help provide or support. So what we want is to help, of course, independent media to reach their audience in a context, and we have heard where it's more and more difficult where there are drastic laws and censorship. So here there are really two key areas, so the dialogue with platforms and the technical development. So we know that online platforms, they play a key role as intermediaries, and we feel that it's very important that they know the Russian media landscape better. Much better, we have seen, for example, the outcry when YouTube blocked the Echo of Moscow channel, we feel that there should be a better understanding by online platforms of Russian independent media. And as much as we want them to fight Russian propaganda, we want them to make sure that the content by independent media is visible online and that there are ways for this content to be even more visible and to reach the audience. So we, the commission already has a dialogue with online platform on a series of issues. And so we want to use this dialogue to also channel the requests and the needs of Russian independent media. So this is something we are working on. And the other aspect on technical support is that we also have in the European Union support for research innovation, once again, to encourage synergies between different partners to maybe develop new technical means to reach Russian audience. There are also interesting ideas, my civil society, for example, there is one project related to satellite capacities. So now some satellite capacities have been freed because we have sanctioned Russian propaganda. So the satellite companies, they cannot, it's not allowed for them to continue broadcasting, for example, Russia today. So it means that we have satellite capacities that could be used for independent media and not for propaganda. So it's also a project that is being worked on right now. So overall, I just wanted to be here to say that this is very important for us, the work that social media are doing, which is an independent media, and we want to help in the best possible way. And so we are, of course, available and open to discuss any ideas and see how we can help in the best way. Thank you so much, Marie. Hopefully next time live. Thank you so much. It was very important to hear the message from Brussels. I would like to thank you all for being here. First of all, I want to thank all our Russian colleagues for the incredible work they're doing. And they do this. And it will be a marathon. My only role is to convey the thanks to the Russian colleagues for your courage from the audience from Russia to the New York Times. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Grazie.